They went briskly out, casting a last glance at the
bed as they passed it. But while Lucy, Blanche
and Caroline still remained behind, Rose gave a final
look round, for she wanted to leave the room in order.
She drew a curtain across the window, and then it
occurred to her that the lamp was not the proper thing
and that a taper should take its place. So she
lit one of the copper candelabra on the chimney piece
and placed it on the night table beside the corpse.
A brilliant light suddenly illumined the dead woman’s
face. The women were horror-struck. They
shuddered and escaped.

“Ah, she’s changed; she’s changed!”
murmured Rose Mignon, who was the last to remain.

She went away; she shut the door. Nana was left
alone with upturned face in the light cast by the
candle. She was fruit of the charnel house, a
heap of matter and blood, a shovelful of corrupted
flesh thrown down on the pillow. The pustules
had invaded the whole of the face, so that each touched
its neighbor. Fading and sunken, they had assumed
the grayish hue of mud; and on that formless pulp,
where the features had ceased to be traceable, they
already resembled some decaying damp from the grave.
One eye, the left eye, had completely foundered among
bubbling purulence, and the other, which remained
half open, looked like a deep, black, ruinous hole.
The nose was still suppurating. Quite a reddish
crush was peeling from one of the cheeks and invading
the mouth, which it distorted into a horrible grin.
And over this loathsome and grotesque mask of death
the hair, the beautiful hair, still blazed like sunlight
and flowed downward in rippling gold. Venus was
rotting. It seemed as though the poison she had
assimilated in the gutters and on the carrion tolerated
by the roadside, the leaven with which she had poisoned
a whole people, had but now remounted to her face and
turned it to corruption.

The room was empty. A great despairing breath
came up from the boulevard and swelled the curtain.

“A Berlin! A Berlin! A Berlin!”

THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER

CHAPTER I

THE BETROTHAL

Pere Merlier’s mill, one beautiful summer evening,
was arranged for a grand fete. In the courtyard
were three tables, placed end to end, which awaited
the guests. Everyone knew that Francoise, Merlier’s
daughter, was that night to be betrothed to Dominique,
a young man who was accused of idleness but whom the
fair sex for three leagues around gazed at with sparkling
eyes, such a fine appearance had he.